SITA acquires AI company Big Blue Analytics to fight airline disruptions

SITA has acquired Big Blue Analytics, the team behind OCC Assistant Manager (OCCam), and will scale the platform to airlines worldwide as the foundation of a broader Intelligent Operations Control Center vision. VIEWPOINT: There is no dignity in AI or automation OCCam is an AI-enabled disruption optimisation platform, refined over years inside live airline operations. When disruption hits, it evaluates every active constraint together – aircraft, crew, passenger itineraries, maintenance – and produces a single, coherent recovery plan in minutes. In production, airlines using OCCam have cut disruption costs up to 30%. The starting point, not the ceiling. Solving disruption is genuinely hard. Aircraft, crew, passengers and maintenance all have to be optimised together, under constant change, against airline priorities that shift by the hour. For years, no system has done this well enough to deliver consistent, feasible outcomes fast enough. Most tools today work in sequence. Reassign the aircraft. Find legal crew. Rebook passengers. Every step creates rework, and small problems cascade. Controllers and duty managers carry that pressure in real time, making the right call fast, in a system that is already stretched. This drives cost. For a mid-size carrier operating just over 100 aircraft, disruption costs can reach between US$70M-$80M. A 25-30% reduction translates into US$20M-$30M. Yet most systems cannot deliver these savings, and they cannot prove them. OCCam solves both problems. First, it breaks the sequential decision-making process. Teams rapidly receive ranked, feasible recovery plans that optimise aircraft, crew and passengers together, with a clear view of cost, on-time performance, passenger impact and compliance. Second, it makes the impact measurable. Every decision is tracked, allowing airlines to quantify savings, evaluate operational performance and demonstrate a clear return from day one. “Airlines have traditionally treated disruption as a fixed cost of doing business, but there is a clear opportunity to approach it differently. In an increasingly volatile and fast-moving environment, the ability to recover with the same agility becomes critical. The airlines that act on this first will recover faster, fly more, and protect more revenue than those that wait, and AI-enabled tools like OCCam are making that possible,” said David Lavorel, CEO of SITA. SITA already delivers solutions such as SITA Mission Watch to more than 100 Operations Control Centers worldwide, helping airlines monitor and optimise their operations. It has also demonstrated its ability to scale AI-enabled products in airline operations. Following the successful global rollout of SITA OptiFlight, the same approach will now bring OCCam to airlines worldwide. SITA has been developing the next layer of AI in airline operations, including large language models and agent-based systems. With Big Blue Analytics’ optimisation engine as the foundation, SITA can now build systems that predict disruptions earlier, automate routine recovery, and allow teams to interact with complex operations in a simple, natural way. “This is the first step towards a much bigger Intelligent Operations Control Center vision, one where planning, monitoring, and recovery come together in a single system. AI allows us to handle multiple constraints at once and tailor decisions to each airline in a way that was not possible before,” said Yann Cabaret, CEO, SITA for Aircraft. “With SITA, we can take what we have built further. Reaching more airlines, faster, and turning advanced optimization into practical tools that help operations teams work smarter every day,” added Pau Collellmir, founder of Big Blue Analytics. For Editorial Inquiries Contact: Editor Matt Driskill at [email protected] For Advertising Inquiries Contact: Head of Sales Sally Passey at [email protected]